Gamasutra has an interview with Englobe’s Tom Edwards about gaming’s ‘Geocultural Risks’. One of the examples he discusses is a name change he oversaw during the development of Halo 2. It’s been known for quite some time that the Arbiter was originally known as ‘Dervish’, and the name was changed for political reasons… but I’ve never seen the reasoning for the change spelled out quite so clearly before this interview. Give it a read!(Louis Wu 17:03:52 UTC)

Halo France has interviewed Graeme Divine, from the Halo Wars team – there’s quite a bit of information here! Go give it a read – either in its original English, or its translated French. Thanks, Sirkan!(Louis Wu 17:00:15 UTC)

Underdawg253 dropped into our forum with word of ‘Ezekiel’, the latest offering from Etzun Films. This is the first part of 3, and it might confuse you. (Or it might not.) He links to a YouTube version, and mid-quality downloadable version from FileFront, and the original thread at HaloGrid (with hidden spoilers if you want to know what’s going on). Nice camerawork.(Louis Wu 16:44:04 UTC)

SPARTAN 294 reported that once again, CoD4 is on top of the Most Played list on LIVE. From the thread responses, it sounds like our forum denizens are getting tired of hearing about it.(Louis Wu 16:36:10 UTC)

Yesterday, we mentioned a blog question by Maximum Fear – he got a bunch of answers, which he’s posted, and he’s put up a new question: which Halo game is your favorite? Go tell him.(Louis Wu 16:23:59 UTC)

Yesterday, AfRo SaUcE stopped by our forum to highlight an interesting betrayal. He was playing through Floodgate… and he was teamkilled by the Arbiter. (Not his buddy PLAYING as the Arbiter – no, this was the NPC version.) He’s got the clip up at Bungie.net – or you can watch the YouTubed version, with his commentary and ready-made replays. To top it all off, Blackstar has created another one of his ‘Custom Halo 3 Medals‘ to commemorate this hilarious occurance (it’s at the bottom of the list). Who knew the Arbiter could be so clumsy?(Louis Wu 15:48:14 UTC)

Ben let us know that MLG has announced that Bungie will be previewing Blackout at the MLG Meadowlands event this weekend – and attendees will get a chance to play it, a few days ahead of the public. Nice!(Louis Wu 21:53:25 UTC)

Dennis Powers let us know that Shipwrecked Episode 8 is up. I could use a maid like that…(Louis Wu 21:47:32 UTC)

Magni Harvald was the first on our forum to notice that Bungie.net has put up a pretty amazing-looking background in anticipation of the release of the Legendary Map Pack next week. Kevin ‘CreditWhore’ Paul did his best to not only take credit for the image, but for the idea behind using the image – luckily, good people are on the job, keeping justice afloat. Update: Oops – apologies to KP, who really DID invent the combustion engine, quantum engineering, and time travel. We didn’t mean to malign his many accomplishments. Update 2: KP asked for a second clarification – he really only invented time travel to annoy Shishka. And that’s the end of that.(Louis Wu 19:15:45 UTC)

As we mentioned earlier today, Bungie held a small press event last week, focused on the Legendary Map Pack. Writeups from that event are embargoed for a little while longer – but the artwork assets that were distributed to attendees are allowed to go up today. (Many of these images were included in last Friday’s Bungie Weekly Update – but there are some new ones, and there are certainly higher-res versions here.) Most sites will slap their own watermark on the bottom, and resize the images to something appropriate for the web – but we love you, so we’re giving you full-sized, unwatermarked (well, beyond what Bungie already put on some of them) images. Swing by the Legendary Map Pack Assets page for more details.(Louis Wu 16:54:34 UTC)

Heh – Darkspire has posted their take on no-scopes – it’s pretty funny. Go watch! Thanks, oddworld.(Louis Wu 16:40:36 UTC)